I’ve been designing and building custom WordPress themes from scratch since 2009. Back on January 1 I switched to custom theming using the Genesis framework – not a huge transition but still something of a learning curve! A few months ago I needed to create a sliding toggle menu for mobile browsers for a client’s site (see the final version to the right). I’d done this for other frameworks numerous times and had the code snippets for it. But getting it working in Genesis took some extra steps. Here we go… I’m assuming here you’re already familiar with the Genesis… Continue Reading
Training
Moving From HTTP to HTTPS: Part 2 of 2
This is Part 2 of my initial article on Moving From HTTP to HTTPS from April… To pick up where we left off… the last thing we did was add the 301 redirects from the old HTTP URLs to the new ones using HTTPS. Let’s continue… 6) If your robots.txt file has any hard-coded HTTP links, change them to HTTPS. You may or may not have a robots.txt file in the root directory of your site; it’s a file that lets you indicate what parts of your site you don’t want crawled by search engine bots. 7) If your site… Continue Reading
Adding Simple User Reviews to Your WordPress Website
Need to add some very simple reviews to your website – like reviews for a service or product, or even testimonials – but are not using a shopping cart that will make it easy for you? You can create a form for visitors to add reviews or testimonials and display them throughout your site – no coding required! This tutorial uses no coding – just the popular Gravity Forms plugin (a commercial one, but the best forms plugin you can buy IMO) and a custom post type plugin. I’ll walk you through the process step by step, showing you how to… Continue Reading
Just Finished a WooCommerce Course…
I have a lot of clients using WooCommerce, a very popular ecommerce plugin for WordPress. I’ve learned a lot about WooCommerce (especially the backend!) by working on clients’ websites, but I knew a bit less about all the details of setup and daily usage than I liked. So I found a WooCommerce class on lynda.com… If you have a WooCommerce store and are not yet what you would consider to be an ‘expert’ at using it, this is very good course. I found that I was pleasantly up to date on most of the topics, but I did learn some very useful things… Continue Reading
A Simple, Current and FREE WordPress Guide
Easy WP Guide is a downloadable PDF or Word file that covers how to do practically anything in the WordPress admin side. Its best feature? It’s updated almost as often as WordPress is. If you’re using an older book, or maybe have no WordPress documentation at all, I’d recommend downloading a free copy of Easy WP Guide. The latest version covers WordPress 3.8 which launched just a few weeks ago.
Quick Custom Google Map for Business Service Area
(Updated Oct. 14, 2013 – In order to import a KML, you’ll need to click on My Places, then instead of the red Create Map button, click the link underneath (“Or create with classic My Maps”). On the next screen you can import a KML; it’s Maps Engine Lite that won’t let you import KMLs at this time.) ——————- Ever tried to use Google Maps to create something more than the typical road or location map? Frustrating, wasn’t it? I needed to make a service area map for a client and started by doing a search for ‘google county map… Continue Reading
WordPress training for your editorial staff
Need a bit of a refresher course on how to use your WordPress site? Or perhaps you’re adding staff and need to have a training session to get new editors up to speed? We can help! Red Kite provides a thorough WordPress training experience for all our project clients. Typically what we’ll do is schedule a meeting at the client’s office – as many trainees can come as needed. Prior to the meeting I will set up user accounts for each attendee so that they can login and follow along on a laptop if they prefer. We’ll get started by… Continue Reading